Half of US Small Businesses Hire Professionals to Build, Maintain Websites

Aug. 28, 2017—According to the GoDaddy Developer Survey 2017, at least 50 percent of small businesses now hire website designers and developers to build or maintain their websites each year.

The website services industry has continued to boom two decades after the emergence of the Internet, indicating healthy small business growth as well.

“As more small businesses are growing their digital presence and understanding the importance of reaching customers online, they have been investing more significantly in the web professionals—designers and developers—who help them build and maintain their sites,” Raghu Murthi, Senior Vice President of Hosting and WebPro at GoDaddy, told Small Business Trends.

Of the 79 percent of web developers and designers that reported client growth of 25 percent or more a year, more than 1 in 3 said growth was 50 percent or more. Nearly half reported they were relatively new to the industry having been in business less than 5 years, but revenue was still high. A majority of web pros surveyed had revenue of $250,000 or more, and 1 in 3 had revenues of over $500,000.

“This research indicates that the ‘Golden Era’ of web development and design shows no sign of slowing down,” Murthi added in a statement.

Meanwhile, almost 75 percent of web developers and web designers are working from home. And over 50 percent of these web pros are using email and video messaging apps such as Skype to communicate with their customer base. Twenty-eight percent mainly use email to talk to clients.